Deputy Memorialized

Newton County Sheriff Billy Rowles will be in Austin Friday at a memorial for a deputy who died almost 90 years ago. Deputy Joseph Obie Talley was shot in the back in 1927, which made him paralyzed. He succumbed on August 24, 1929.The National Law Memorial website reports Talley had been a deputy for five months when he went into a bar on May 1, 1927, to question a man who had been causing a disturbance. Talley watched as the man walked away, and then he turned to leave. The man pulled out a pistol and shot the deputy in the back.The website said the shot severed Talley’s spinal cord and left him paralyzed. He died two years and nearly three months later.